


Catch The Man

by GenerallyHuxurious (GallifreyanOmnishambles)



Series: Modern Emperors [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bala-Tik Has A Bad Day, Being Lost, Blood, Broken Bones, Fear, Geographical Isolation, Gratuitous Map References, Hux is Not Nice, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multiple Selves, Murder, Self-cest, Smoking, Survival Horror, Unconsciousness, Wilderness Survival, creepy hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-23 01:57:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8309368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/pseuds/GenerallyHuxurious
Summary: Bala-Tik Vernal would very much like to know why Eamon Hux is trying to kill him. He'd really REALLY like him to stop. (Modern Emperors AU)Huxloween Day 17





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to @Fedaykin for the gift that is Killing Strangers.

Bala-Tik Vernal knew Eamon Hux of old. 

They were more or less of an age, but Bala-Tik had  inherited his father’s odd fishing/smuggling enterprise a few years before the young assassin’s rise to power, after the old man had drowned in the North Pacific under slightly mysterious circumstances. There’d never been any proof that the senior Hux’ organisation had been involved, and since Bala-Tik had hated his vicious, overbearing father he hadn’t considered it much of a betrayal to make use of their services later on. 

Business was business. Nothing personal. 

He knew Hux to be ruthless, efficient and deadly. In the city. Since his own operations stuck to the islands and the mountains leading to the Canadian border he had never expected to attract Eamon’s attention himself. He certainly hadn’t expected to find himself running through the forest some six miles North-West of Spada Lake with Seattle’s most notorious assassin on his heels. 

The thing that most irritated him, after the rain, the rough terrain, the poisonous plant life and of course the killer somewhere in the dense woodland behind him, was the fact that no one would tell him  _ why _ he was being hunted. Before he’d been forced to dump the car, he’d used half his phone battery calling anyone of consequence to try to sort this out. 

He was a man of business- there was  _ always _ a way to fix these things with enough money or even a portion of his operation if it came down to it. The business was important, but not being dead was far more vital in the overall scheme of things. 

No one would talk to him. 

No one knew anything.

The confusingly genderless person manning the front desk had outright refused to put him through to Phasma at all, insisting there was no contract and he should stop wasting everyone’s time. They’d even said that Eamon was sitting there in the lobby, though Bala-Tik knew he’d seen him in his highly conspicuous Bentley, tailing him all the way from Bellevue to Maltby. They’d refused to let Bala-Tik speak to him anyway so he hadn’t found the tale particularly convincing.

He’d lost track of the redhead then and he’d lost phone service shortly after, somewhere around Sultan. He had a safe house up there, the kind of grass roofed bunker that wasn’t even visible on Google Maps. Once he got to it, there wasn’t a snowball in hell’s that a townie like Hux would find him.

Bala-Tik never made it that far. He’d had a blowout on Sultan Basin Rd that had turned out to be two bullet holes in each off side tire.

Terrified for his life, he’d dived for the forest and not looked back.

* * *

The woods out here were all close-growing pine and thick primeval ferns. There were trails of course, and access roads, but he had to assume that Hux would follow those easier routes.

He couldn’t afford to move out of the relative shelter of the trees, even if it made his progress slower than he would have liked. Every action had to be calculated to keep himself hidden. He’d been wearing a bright red windbreaker when he’d set out, the shirt underneath white and thin. Rather than abandon his outer layer he’d dipped the coat in mud to disguise the colour. He wasn’t afraid to get dirty. Bala-Tik prided himself on taking border runs and crewing duties when his fleet required it. He knew what it was to get filth and grease and blood on his hands. 

Like most of the men in his line of work he’d seen Eamon Hux in the clubs and bars. Brilliant red hair always artfully mussed, car spotless, too-tight suits of blue and grey and impractical shining white. Yes, Eamon might have followed him here but he wouldn’t stoop to this. Eamon Hux had standards to maintain and that should make him easy to spot.

Thank God for the pine trees and the delayed onset of Fall. The forest was still blessedly green and that orange hair would be easy enough to spot.

He heard footsteps through the undergrowth though he saw no sign of either man or wildlife. Glancing back every few seconds he pressed on.

His course meandered, half intentional and half a consequence of being forced to change direction to circumvent cliffs and gullies he didn’t see until he was already on top of them. This was not an area he was used to travelling through on foot and he frequently lost his way. 

His clothes were soaked now from the damp hanging moss that obscured every path and the streams he had occasionally fallen into where the underbrush was at its thickest. 

For a while he’d followed one of the streams but it had led him to a glittering sunlit lake. There was no cover there. 

A man had been standing on the far shore. Not fishing. Just standing. Smoking. Watching. 

The figure had been wearing a hat, and perhaps it had only been a trick of the light but Bala-Tik would have sworn, even at such a distance, that his long sideburns were orange.

He’d run back under cover, his heart in his throat, expecting to be shot at any moment. 

The man didn’t move.

* * *

Gradually the sunlight filtering through the canopy had faded, making his progress even more difficult. The colour leached out of the world and took with it his faith that he might see Hux coming by the distinctive pigment of his hair. Every movement was a threat, every indistinct shape was his enemy, every noise was his imminent and bloody death.

Half mad with terror he ran so fast he couldn’t hear a thing over the rasp of his own breathing and he hadn’t any hope of seeing anything but a blur. Somehow this was better than the alternative. Each time his muscles failed and forced him to slow, his brain found some new threat to spur him on. Where he went didn’t matter anymore so long as it was away.

But as night fell properly so had he, tumbling headfirst in a tangled of limbs down an embankment that had been entirely hidden by waist high ferns. 

Rolling to a stop against a sitka, his world filled with pain.

His right elbow was a nexus of agony while his fingers were numb. 

He’d broken the arm- in one, possibly two, places.

Vision swimming he’d huddled under the lee of the cliff, trying to get his bearings. Trying to decide what to do. 

The blood streaming into his eyes only registered a moment before he lost consciousness. 

* * *

He didn’t know how long he’d been out.

It had been dark when he’d fallen and it was still dark now. His head was pounding and his mouth was dry as he staggered to his feet but given his blood soaked state that might mean only an hour had passed or maybe twenty four.

Something rustled in the trees above him. 

Peering cautiously upward he saw the dull red glow of some creature’s eyes. 

He blinked.

One eye. 

The light flared, brightening enough to outline pale thick eyebrows and sharp cheekbones as Hux took a drag from the cigarette held so casually between plush expressive lips. They twisted slowly into a sneer. 

The light vanished. 

Bala-Tik bolted. 

He could hear nothing behind him as he ran, though he made enough noise himself by crashing through the ferns to wake the dead so perhaps he wouldn’t hear any pursuit.

He tumbled to the ground when soft loam abruptly gave way to asphalt. 

Try as he might to roll and protect his ruined arm the impact still made him scream.

Lights flashed across his vision at the pain, became headlights.

His scream of pain became one of fear until the car came to halt in a screech of tires. 

Hauling himself up from the ground with one blood smeared hand on the bumper of the blue vehicle Bala-Tik didn’t noticed the winged B on the bonnet, he was too intent on finding help.

The windows were tinted just enough to be opaque on that unlit rural highway and even as the glass rolled down it took him a moment or two to distinguish the sharp intelligent features of Eamon Hux. 

Bala-Tik staggered backwards as the door opened sharply, catching his broken arm and making him sob aloud in shock. 

“Are you alright?” Hux asked in that calm, softly accented voice, his smile bright and reassuring as he followed Bala-Tik step for step. 

Still not looking behind himself Bala-Tik fell again, sliding awkwardly down the bank of a river to land ass-deep in ice cold water. 

Hux watched him from the roadway, his head tipped slightly to one side as he casually adjusted his cuffs. A car passed behind him, splitting his concentration and Bala-Tik ran on.

He’d recognised that road. It was the Mountain Loop highway. He’d barely covered nine miles.

At least the south fork of the Stillaguamish River was relatively wide there. Hux would need to find a narrower point if he wanted to follow Bala-Tik without ruining his suit. 

If he kept moving North East he could lose his pursuer and take shelter on the slopes of Liberty Mountain. Someone like Hux would never find him there.

It was a good plan he thought to himself, ignoring the water streaming from his clothes and the blood still blurring his vision, his limbs trembling with cold and shock and pain and blood loss.

He struggled on through dense foliage for hours or maybe minutes. He didn’t know any more.

Again the trees gave way to open air. 

He’d misjudged his position. He had stepped out on the the rock strewn bank of the Stillaguamish again. Hux was waiting for him, sitting neatly on a boulder, his suit pristine. One ankle rested casually on the other knee. He looked like he was in a bar waiting to be served a drink.

Bala-Tik turned to run once more.

Hux was standing behind him, his posture rigid, his tall slim frame encased in expensive black hiking gear. There was a knife in his hand and a cigarette between his lips.

He must be hallucinating. 

He could feel himself begin to hyperventilate as he turned wildly, trying to hold both men in his vision at once. 

The Hux on the rock stood casually, fingertips brushing invisible specks from the neatly pressed fabric of his dark blue slacks. 

For some reason his mind volunteered the information that he had never once since Eamon Hux smoking. Why that was important now he didn’t know.

Bala-Tik backed away, stumbling on the uneven shoreline as the two visions converged, the black and the blue, the urban and rural. He expected them to overlay, for the two to converge as his mind righted itself and he blinked deliberately, trying to force the effect. It never came.

The two men were walking side by side now, their arms brushing as they matched step for step. Slowly Bala-Tik began to notice more details. Even in the starlight he could see that their hair was styled differently and the one in the suit was unshaven. That one smiled at him while the other sneered.

They were almost on top of him when the one in the suit unconsciously took the other’s hand. 

There was something in that simple gesture. Something wrong. Something obscene. 

Bala-Tik took another step back, his concentration broken. 

He’d reached the edge of the water. The rocks here were mossy and slick. His boots found no traction, tipping him backward into the river for a second time.

* * *

There was a crack as the wretched man’s skull made contact with a jagged rock just above the surface of the river. His body twitched as blood flowed black into the fast moving current.

Eamon turned to meet his companion’s gaze as the man in the river gurgled and gasped. 

With military precision, Auren Hux stepped forward and pressed one booted foot down onto the man’s chest. Gradually the blood streaked face sank beneath the torrent. 

A few bubbles and he was still. 

“His car’s parked half a mile East, it was easy enough to move once I replaced the tires you ruined. Taking out  _ two _ really was unnecessary, Auren.” Eamon said as he lead his double back towards the road. “The trunk’s full of camping gear. He might get carried as far as the Sound but they’ll assume he fell in here. I dumped a canteen a little way downstream, if they find it they’ll think he was getting water.”

Auren nodded, ignoring the initial criticism as he took a drag of his cigarette and blew clove scented smoke rings toward the stars.

“You really shouldn’t smoke those you know,” Eamon continued, irritation creeping into his voice.

“Why not?”

“They give you cancer for a start.”

Auren stopped dead in his tracks, plucking the half burned cigarette from his lips to stare at the glowing cherry. “Why in the stars would you make a cigarra that causes cancer?!”

“They all do.” Eamon said with a frown. “I assumed you knew since you had cigarettes with you when you arrived.”

Shaking his head in confusion Auren walked on. “This planet makes no sense.”

“You’ll get used it.”


End file.
